A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including Love After Dark, Big Love, Desperate Antics and Yours Truly.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

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A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including Love After Dark, Big Love, Desperate Antics and Yours Truly.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

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Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - LOVE AFTER DARK: Radically different outcomes from identical beginnings

- reviewed by Nik Smythe

The algebraic breakdown reveals fifteen actors playing 3 one-act plays with five characters in each, four of whom have the same name in all three. Each one opens with an identical script, albeit played in radically differing ways ...

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Geo Dome, Christchurch - REVOLVE FROM DUSK TO DAWN: A strangely beautiful aesthetic generated from sleep science

- reviewed by Kate Sullivan

As the dancer crosses the audience/performer threshold, a mundane moment is created, and this creates one of my favorite moments in the performance. The audience sitting across from me look as if they are part of the performance, as if they are all passengers on a subway

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Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - FASITUA AMOSA IS RUUFLESS 2.0: Serious food for thought amongst the chuckles and belly laughs

- reviewed by Nik Smythe

Given the opening night audience comprises just seven people, including the guy videotaping it, Fasitua Amosa brings admirable energy to his essentially low-key, chatty style of observational humour and draws consistent laughter throughout the intimate set.

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Studio 77, VUW, Wellington - BIG LOVE: Diversity unified in timeless tale

- reviewed by John Smythe

Big Love is a New Zealand production influenced by Asian theatre practice of an American playwright’s relatively comedic reworking of an ancient Greek tragedy which is thought to be the earliest surviving play of the western world.

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Q, 305 Queen St, Auckland - 2011 - SOUTHERN LIGHTS DANCE COMPANY: Indomitable Cantabrian dancers

- reviewed by Jenny Stevenson

The dancers’ focus never wavers and together they give a strong performance that draws on their ability to control and carefully place the movement and maintain intricate patternings.

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Meteor Theatre, Hamilton - DESPERATE ANTICS: Satirical humour in ‘peach’ of a play

- reviewed by Gail Pittaway

Desperate Antics is a highly entertaining satirical piece, attributed to NZ writer and actor Kevin Keys, but in fact owing a great deal of credit to the Christian creed which he parodies relentlessly – both in text and ritual.

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Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - YOURS TRULY: Victorian contradictions evoked with skilful stylistic shifts

- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

Playwright Albert Belz has earned considerable acclaim for his treatment of Maori subjects but his re-telling of the Jack the Ripper story seems to be making a statement about the perils of pigeon-holing writers according to their ethnicity.

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Q, 305 Queen St, Auckland - SHINE LADY BY SPINNING SUN: Original, engaging and beguiling contemporary dance

- reviewed by Marianne Schultz

Without spoken words, multi-media, projected images or elaborate costumes... a complete and satisfying experience of dance .. in a world where movement communicates.

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Meteor Theatre, Hamilton - ATONAL HEART : FOUR MONOLOGUES: Strong writing and directing produce wonderful performances in contrasting styles

- reviewed by Gail Pittaway

This intriguingly titled show consists of Four Monologues. James Cain and Michael Switzer write and direct two each; Michael Burrow and Henry Ashby each perform a monologue by each of the writer/directors.

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Q, 305 Queen St, Auckland - Y CHROMOSOME: All male, energetic, fast paced production

- reviewed by Roxanne de Bruyn

The showcase is ultimately a celebration of male dancers, and effectively demonstrates their strengths and attributes - their physical prowess, their skill, technique and performance ability, and the very different moods and expressions they bring to their performances.

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ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland - NEW ZEALAND BODY ART AWARDS SHOW 2011: Spectacular body art entertains well

- reviewed by Raewyn Whyte

The "art" in the NZ Body Art Awards is an extraordinary mix of craft and design, involving makeup, body paint, embedded and attached objects, masks and body pieces, prosthetics and body extensions, all applied to a living human body... The living canvas which is the outcome of this work is seldom available for public display, other than on one special occasion -- as the culmination of the annual body art awards where finalists take to the catwalk as the entertainers in a gala showcase.

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Geo Dome, Christchurch - 2011 - SOUTHERN LIGHTS DANCE COMPANY: Sources in culture, science, spirituality

- reviewed by Paul Young

The dancers exhibit a connection, a deliberate relativity, sometimes apparently triggering each other. They watch each other, I sense their investment but there is nothing at stake, they are waiting to make a decision but there is no anticipation. This is precision. I have been involved in abstract work before, but how this quality of easeful synchronicity is achieved, I don’t know.

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Civic Theatre, Auckland - ANYTHING GOES: Porter’s merry dance has enough fun to sink a ship

- reviewed by Janet McAllister

Cole Porter’s smart-to-be-silly, witty-and-warm songs are so exceptional that they could pull this 1934 hit musical comedy through by themselves. But Auckland Music Theatre isn’t pulling back; instead, it layers other treats on top of Porter’s fantastic musical anchor to create a tremendous night out, with brilliant casting and huge song-and-dance numbers.

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Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - YOURS TRULY: Riveting evening of originality, theatricality and entertainment

- reviewed by Adey Ramsel

I’ve had Albert Belz’s script of Yours Truly on the shelf for a number of years. That I never got round to reading it is unforgivable, that I never got round to thinking about producing it is obvious, but it goes to show how many mini classics of theatre lie on book shelves forgotten or ignored.

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Q, 305 Queen St, Auckland - TUAKANA: The emergence of something really exciting, a bit chaotic, completely energizing and necessary

- reviewed by Tamati Patuwai

Tuakana certainly lives up to its title. ‘Tuakana’ are known as the older siblings to the younger ‘teina’. So with the likes of Taiaroa Royal, Tane Mete and Jason Moore to name a few the younger choreographers, Kura Te Ua, Louise Potiki-Bryant & Ngarino Watt, though most certainly shining in their own light, are in great company. In time this exciting amalgam of Contemporary Dance and Kapa Haka will begin to bear fruits that will invigorate our culture and our experience of what dance can be.

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Q, 305 Queen St, Auckland - TUAKANA: Q's auditorium well warmed by Maori dance

- reviewed by Raewyn Whyte

Maori contemporary dance forms set side by side reveal their common ground.

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Civic Theatre, Auckland - ANYTHING GOES: Escapist stuff where, as with Wall Street, anything goes

- reviewed by Lexie Matheson

In Grant Meese’s Anything Goes everything goes. The balances are just right. It takes itself just seriously enough to transcend our disbelief and is staged with a self-confident assurance that stops just short of downright arrogance.

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Meteor Theatre, Hamilton - THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE: An eerie re-enactment

- reviewed by Melisa Martin

The Hamilton arts culture is continually growing and thriving, with this year’s Fringe Festival being no exception to the rule.

A staging of The Massacre of Glencoe at The Meteor theatre in Hamilton could have been well-ruined and somewhat farcical with grown men prancing about in tartan skirts; however under the careful direction of writer/actor Cecilia Mooney, that was not the case.

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St James Theatre, Wellington - 42ND STREET: A night of sparkle and old Broadway glamour

- reviewed by Christine Brooks

42nd Street begins with the curtain partially rising, pausing to reveal many impressively synchronised tap dancing legs and feet, before lifting up all the way to reveal the rest of the beautifully costumed chorus during the opening number, ‘Audition’.

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Opera House, Wellington - FOOTNOTE DANCE: MADE IN NZ 2011: Footnote satisfies

- reviewed by Ann Hunt

FOOTNOTE’S latest season of four new works is exciting, innovative, extremely well danced and deserves to be widely seen.... The major work of the evening, body/fight/time is from the tireless Malia Johnston. Choreographically and visually satisfying, it also stimulates intellectually.

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BATS, Wellington - THE FIRST ASIAN AB: Not about the rugby

- reviewed by Lynn Freeman

Renee Liang has written a lot about the Asian New Zealand experience and her work always hits a nerve. She doesn’t lecture, nor does she flinch from reminding us that as a country we can still have a ‘them and us’ mentality that stops us being truly multi-cultural.

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BATS, Wellington - THE ENGINE ROOM: Performance will win many votes

- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson

Rugby, as the saying goes, is a game of two halves. Though there is no interval in The Engine Room, just about everything else in this entertaining and very funny comedy that mixes fact with fiction is in two halves.

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Titirangi Theatre, Lopdell House, Auckland - TOIL AND TROUBLE: Magical script, spectacular lighting and sound

- reviewed by Joanna Page

Last night I visited a Wizards’ Guild in Titirangi where I discovered magic and mayhem – although not in equal parts.

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Meteor Theatre, Hamilton - SPRING AWAKENING: The timeless quest to know about sex

- reviewed by Gail Pittaway

New to the Hamilton Theatre scene is Pinching the Mint Youth Theatre, a company of actors plucked from student life, from high school to tertiary age. Calvin Petersen, the production’s director, is already well known locally for his comic talent as an actor. Here he takes on an entirely new challenge ...

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See more recent reviews at theatreview.org.nz, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory

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